Bears Open Spring Season At Collegiate Invitational

WGOLF2/3/2023 12:44 PM | By: Cal Athletics

Cal Part Of Strong 12-Team Field Competing At Guadalajara Country Club

The Cal women’s golf team heads to Mexico next week to begin its spring season at the Collegiate Invitational at Guadalajara Country Club hosted by the University of Virginia on Sunday and Monday.

The Golden Bears will be one of two Pac-12 schools included in the 12-team field, alongside No. 22 Arizona. Also competing on the par 72, 6,333-yard course are four top-15 teams ranked in Golfstat’s final fall rankings in No. 5 North Carolina, No. 8 Tennessee, No. 12 Virginia and No. 13 Florida State.

“We’re in a really good place,” Cal head coach Nancy McDaniel said. “We had two really good weeks of competitive qualifying to get everybody up and running. This is an early tournament for us, so warm weather and an awesome course is where you want to go and see how you stack up because it’s a really good, solid field.”

Cristina Ochoa, Jieming Yang and Mika Jin return to the lineup for the Bears’ first action since the Pac-12 Preview in the fall, a competition which began with Ochoa shooting 6-under on day one to tie a program record. Three-time NCGA Player of the Year Annika Borrelli will also be in action, as will senior Tzu-Yi Chang, who will make her season debut as part of Cal’s lineup. This will be the third different lineup for the Bears this season.

McDaniel and the Bears originally hosted at Guadalajara Country Club back in 2006, when Virginia head coach Ria Scott was a student-athlete at Cal. They all returned in February of 2020 when UVA hosted the inaugural Collegiate Invitational, which turned out to be one of the final collegiate golf events prior to the COVID-19 shutdowns.

“Ria has continued to have good connections with the Mexican Golf Association, so she brought it back and knew the Guadalajara Country Club was a great venue,” McDaniel said. “We want to support Ria and the tournament, so we’re excited to be able to go back there.”

The Bears are set to tee off at 8:24 a.m. PT on Sunday.